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He was instead jailed for 14 years at Burnley Crown Court in February.

Claims by Eves’ lawyers that the 14-year term was ‘manifestly excessive’ were thrown out by three senior judges at London’s Court of Appeal, who said he was fortunate not to be handed a discretionary life term.

He said one girl was ‘totally groomed’. When one of the girls told her mum what had happened, police raided Eve’s home and found a catalogue of sick images on his computer. They included indecent photos of children, some of which were of his victims.

Lord Justice Leveson said the judge could have invoked a discretionary life sentence for what he described as ‘about as bad a case of grooming and abuse as it is possible to imagine.’

But Katherine Pierpoint, for Eves, claimed the overall sentence was too long because the judge had overestimated the seriousness of the offences visited upon one of the victims.

The three judges rejected those arguments and upheld the 14-year jail term, commenting that had the offences been committed more recently, Eves would have been given an indeterminate sentence for public protection (IPP).

Mr Justice Williams said: “We are not persuaded that these sentences, whether considered individually or collectively in total, can be regarded as manifestly excessive.

“As the learned judge said in her sentencing remarks, this was a campaign of depravity.

“The offending involved serious grooming of each of the young victims. The appellant preyed on the naivety of each of his victims and, in the case of one girl in particular, upon her vulnerability and her sense of insecurity.”